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Senior Pentagon officials are reluctant to be seen to anoint Mr Chalabi as Saddam's successor but consider the Sunni banker, who was educated in Britain and America, as the obvious candidate to lead a free Iraq at the outset.

Jay Garner, the former general who is heading the US reconstruction effort from a temporary headquarters in Kuwait, is believed to be hoping he can relinquish the reins after about three months.

The Bush administration intends to divide Iraq into three regions, north, south and central. Barbara Bodine, a former American ambassador to Yemen, who is viewed with suspicion by senior Pentagon officials, is due to run the central region from Baghdad.

Mr Rumsfeld has clashed with Colin Powell, the secretary of state, over who controls the distribution of humanitarian supplies. Last week, Mr Powell wrote to Mr Rumsfeld asking that it be "clarified" that the US Disaster Response Teams should report to him and not Gen Garner.

Iraqi opposition groups have complained that the infighting threatens to undermine the reconstruction of the country. "It's not a pretty sight," said one source. "This is Washington politics at its dirtiest. You've got representatives of all the different agencies and everybody wants their guy to be on top. No one trusts anyone."

There has also been dismay within the opposition groups that Iraqis have had a minor role during the war. "You need an Iraqi face on this," said Qubad Talabany, Washington spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

"You need Iraqis with the military units so when they go into a village an Iraqi can go to the head of that village and say, 'Look I'm one of you guys, I'm here to help you, these Americans are your friends'."

Philip Delves Broughton in Paris writes: France, Germany and Russia sought to wrest back the diplomatic initiative on Iraq yesterday by calling for the United Nations to intervene immediately at a humanitarian level, and later take the main role in rebuilding the country.

After a lunch in Paris yesterday with his French and German counterparts, Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, called for the fighting to end immediately.

"We say this to our [American and British] partners, with whom we are maintaining a dialogue, because the end of the war can only benefit everyone."

Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, said that he hoped the coalition forces could stabilise the situation as quickly as possible.

The UN had to lead the humanitarian effort in Iraq and later, political and economic reconstruction, he said, giving warning of a "shock of cultures and civilisations" if the United Nations was left out. He said France and Britain were in agreement on this.

He added that Iraq must not be a "kind of El Dorado, a cake for states to divide up", and given the length of time it would take to rebuild the country, the UN had to take the lead.